


Ghosts

by Thei



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Broken Boys, But he's not the only one, Gen, and not dealing very well, billy lives, but he's kinda broken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-28 22:08:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21399421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thei/pseuds/Thei
Summary: Billy should be dead, is the thing.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Steve Harrington
Comments: 12
Kudos: 76





	Ghosts

Billy should be dead, is the thing.

He doesn’t understand it. He remembers drinking chemicals that burned him from the inside out, being thrown through a brick wall, and crashing his car – all things that _should_ have killed him.

Being _impaled_ should have killed him. Yet here he is. Still breathing.

Or. Maybe he’s not breathing, after all. Maybe he _did_ die.

Because once everything’s over, he walks out of the chaos with ripped clothes and no wounds. No one stops him. It’s like he’s invisible.

A ghost.

The place is full of people. Military, civilians, men in suits. There are cars, helicopters, news vans.

He walks away from it all.

His head is empty.

There’s no one in there but him, and right at that moment – while he’s still numb with shock, but before the memories and the knowledge of what he’s done hit him full-force – he finds relief in the silence. Everything around him is chaos, but his head is blessedly empty for the first time in what feels like forever.

He makes it home. Floating.

He doesn’t remember how, but suddenly he’s at the house and then he’s inside and then he’s shoved back against the door and his father is there, yelling at him about his appearance and his absence and his weird behavior.

His father pokes him in the chest. Billy looks at the finger, and then at his father’s face, and tries to remember how it felt to fear him.

He can’t quite recall the feeling, now.

Maybe ghosts can’t feel fear. He might not mind being dead, if that’s the case.

His father wants to know where he’s been. _Hell_, Billy doesn’t say.

Where is Max? Why isn’t she with him? Billy doesn’t know, and says so.

He remembers her face – troubled? – but not as clearly as he remembers the face of another girl, one he doesn’t know. And nowhere near as clearly as he remembers his mother’s face, when she was smiling at him.

He remembers the _feeling_ of smiling back.

A slap to the face makes his cheek sting, and dissolves all thoughts of smiles, and grounds him. He’s not floating anymore; he’s alive somehow and his father is yelling in his face and Billy is not afraid anymore.

He laughs.

His father’s face turns red, and he raises his arm, makes a fist.

Billy is grounded, again and again as his father tries to teach him the old lessons. Billy is reminded, repeatedly, of how it feels to be alive.

Ghosts don’t feel pain. But Billy does.

He laughs.

He laughs, and his father’s face turns redder and redder, and eventually, his father’s fists turn red, too.

In the end, there’s a slam of a door and he’s on the floor, breathing, breathing, his forehead against hardwood, eyes closed, _feeling_.

He hurts. He’s alive.

He remembers drinking chemicals that burned him from the inside out, being thrown through a brick wall, and crashing his car. He remembers being forced to get up after all of it. He remembers not being allowed to die.

He gets up, eventually. But this time it’s his choice. He _chooses_ not to die, this time.

The room where he keeps his things feels like a stranger’s space. The bed feels wrong, and ill-fitting for his body. But he lies in it, and he sleeps.

He dreams. And remembers.

Screams and violence and pain and death and the things **_He_** made him do. People crying, people begging, people seeing Billy’s face staring down at them right before they died.

He’s stuck, he’s trapped, he can’t move, **_He_**’s got him!

Billy wakes up with his legs tangled in his sheets, still hearing the screams of himself and countless others, and promptly throws up on the floor beside his bed.

His body’s hurting, still. There’s blood on his face, bruises on his skin, an ache in his bones.

It means he’s not a ghost.

He didn’t die.

He _should_ be dead, but he _isn’t_, and he doesn’t understand it.

But he doesn’t need to understand it. He needs to _leave_.

Not bothering to clean up the mess on the floor, he slides out of bed and looks around the room. There is nothing in here that he needs. Nothing that stands out to him, nothing important.

He’s numb, and shaking, and painfully alive.

He leaves. Stuffs his emergency cash in his back pocket, grabs a jacket, ransacks the cupboards in the kitchen for some food and drink – because ghosts might not need those, but Billy is not a ghost – and fills a plastic bag.

There are eyes on him, as he leaves. The eyes belong to the woman who was never his mother, who never even got close to being his mother, who never got close to him at all.

He doesn’t look back.

It’s early morning. The sun is up, and there are no clouds in the sky. It will be a beautiful, warm day.

He shudders. **_He_** liked it cold.

There are no keys in his pocket, and no car on the driveway. He _feels_, a pang of _something_ in his chest, and it’s painful and wonderful all at once.

Ghosts don’t _feel_. But Billy does.

He walks.

The town is full of strange people; stranger than before. No one pays him any mind. He’s invisible, just a teenager there to look at the wreckage. A nobody, there to gawk.

A ghost.

His car is gone.

He doesn’t remember asking for it. Doesn’t remember getting any answers. There are screams in his head that want to escape, there are memories there that want to overwhelm him, and he’s busy pushing it all back – busy not falling apart – so he doesn’t remember asking.

But he must have gotten answers, because he knows where to look, now.

He doesn’t know who towed his car to the junkyard, or why they were so quick to do it, but he’s grateful for it. The junkyard is empty. Silent. A graveyard for broken, unwanted things.

It’s the perfect place, for a ghost.

He creeps into the back of the Camaro, brushes some broken glass from the leather, and curls up on the seat.

And then the memories come.

Does ghosts have memories? Billy does.

He cries, and he cries, and he _cries_.

* * *

He stays in his car for a day and a night, and then another day.

The days are warm. The night is cool. But he can barely tell the difference.

No one comes for him. There are no sounds but the ones he makes, and birds, and bugs, and the wind in the trees.

His tears dry up. He feels empty again. Empty head, empty stomach, empty heart.

He thinks that he might not be a ghost yet, but that maybe he can stay here until he becomes one. He thinks he wouldn’t mind it, much. It’s peaceful here. He’s in his car. He’s home.

Besides, ghosts don’t _feel_, or _remember_, or _cry_.

Ghosts don’t smoke, either, but Billy sure does. He finds a mangled pack of cigarettes in the glove compartment, and half a box of matches under the front seat. The smoke is hot and thick when it enters his lungs.

He closes his eyes and breathes it in. **_He_** liked it cold. Billy fucking _revels_ in the warmth, and how it melts him from the inside and out.

Later, he’s smoking yet another cigarette when he’s startled by violent sounds. He thinks that maybe he fell asleep, at first, and maybe he’s dreaming – or worse, _remembering_ – but there are no screams. No pleading. Just thuds, and the familiar sounds of breaking glass.

He moves out of his car for the first time in what feels like forever, drawn to the sounds that aren’t screams.

And he finds –

Well.

He finds Steve Harrington, of all people, beating the hell out of a rusty old car with a bat – _the_ bat – with a pinched expression on his face. The sight of him is enough to jar Billy out of whatever haze he’s been in since – since –

Billy blinks, and breathes, and this time he is actually _aware_ of the night air entering his lungs. His breathing is a conscious thing, now, something he chooses to do.

Steve’s face is bruised, and swollen, and Billy feels

(he _feels_)

his own face throb in sympathy.

Billy opens his mouth to say something, at the same time as Steve spots him, and whirls around. For a second (or minute, or hour, or day or week or month or year or eternity) they just stare at each other – Steve’s eyes are wide, and maybe Billy’s are too.

“Billy?” Steve says, and his voice is wavering, and Billy feels that word like an arrow, piercing through skin and flesh. That’s _him_. His _name_. He exists, still. He’s still alive.

Ghosts don’t have names.

He nods.

Steve shakes his head (and Billy goes cold, so cold; suddenly afraid to be rejected). “Are you …?”

He trails off, but Billy hears him. _Are you a monster, still? Are you a threat? Are you a ghost?_

Billy kind of wants to answer yes, but his mouth doesn’t work.

“I”, he says, and then runs out of energy. All words are gone.

He takes a drag of his half-forgotten cigarette, and closes his eyes to enjoy the heat of the smoke in his lungs. Maybe Steve will bash his head in with the bat. Maybe Billy will open his eyes, and finally be dead.

But there’s no pain. No crack of bat against skull.

He opens his eyes again, and Steve has taken one step closer. _Why._

The bat hangs loosely in his hand. Prepared, but not prepared enough. _Stupid._

Steve snorts. “I know.”

Oh. Billy spoke aloud. He thinks he might have done that a lot, lately. It didn’t matter when there was no one around.

“So”, Steve says. “You still possessed?”

It’s said off-handedly, and it’s _jarring_ and _grounding_ and it’s making Billy’s face scrunch up in confusion, pulling on his swollen skin.

“I don’t think so”, he says, and he can hear his own voice for the first time. Maybe for the first time in his whole life. He doesn’t recognize it. It’s like it’s a stranger speaking.

Steve looks doubtful. Billy snorts, and doesn’t blame him.

“**_He_** likes it cold”, he says instead, and puts the lit cigarette to the inside of his own arm.

It _burns_, and it hurts, and it’s so intense it forces a hiss out of him. Tears well up in his eyes, but he doesn’t remove it until it’s out, and he keeps eye contact with Steve the whole time.

“Jesus, Billy”, Steve says, but doesn’t move to stop him other than a half-aborted step forward. His fingers clench around the bat.

Billy laughs, and it sounds like broken glass. He wonders if maybe Steve has taken the bat to him after all, and he just didn’t notice.

They stand in silence for a while. Billy has no more energy to speak, and looking at Steve, he thinks that maybe Steve feels the same way. Steve looks tired. Beat up. Run down.

“What happened to you?” Billy surprises himself by asking.

Steve shrugs. “Russians.” It’s a simple word, which doesn’t make a lick of sense.

He doesn’t ask what happened to Billy.

“Russians”, Billy repeats, tasting the word. Steve only nods, and gestures vaguely toward his own face.

“Yup. Underground Russians.”

Of course. Why not? Billy’s already been possessed by a shadow, killed a lot of people (_don’t think about it, don’t let the memories out again, not now!_), and seen a monster made of meat and death – underground Russians is no less weird.

So Billy nods.

He’s still holding what’s left of the cigarette. Steve’s staring at it, and seemingly not paying Billy any mind at all. Which is stupid. Billy is a monster too, after all, and Steve knows it.

“Can I bum one?”

* * *

They sit on the roof of the Camaro, each holding a cigarette and looking out into the darkness. They’re not looking at each other, and they’re not touching, but they sit close enough that Billy can feel Steve’s body heat through the fabric of his shirt.

It’s weird. But not unpleasant.

“We thought you left”, Steve says, voice raspy as if he’s been screaming as much as Billy has.

“Hm?”

“Max told us that you were gone when she got home. Her mom saw you leave. We thought you were still …”

_Still a monster_, he doesn’t say. But he means it.

“Maybe I am”, Billy says, voice cracking.

“Mm. Maybe.” Steve doesn’t sound like he _cares_, though. Which is –

“Stupid.”

“I know. Fucking stupid.”

And then Steve is laughing, and Billy recognizes the sound of broken glass laughter, so he’s expecting the tears when they come.

“What happened to you?” he asks again, softer – because Billy is defective, but Steve seems _broken_.

Steve wipes his tears off with the back of his hand – seemingly not caring that Billy sees – and sniffs. His hand is shaking. _All_ of him is shaking.

It’s not even cold out.

“Russians, man”, he says, and takes a drag off the cigarette. “Russians, and fucking huge interdimensional monsters and nightmare dogs and people fucking _dying_!”

Billy screws his eyes shut. Sees the faces of the people who died at his hands. Sees the monster that wouldn’t let him die with them. He fights the tears. Fails.

“M-hm”, he says. If he says more, he’ll break open. He doesn’t want to break, anymore. He doesn’t think he can put himself back together if he breaks again.

So they sit in silence for a while. Not looking at each other. There are silent tears running down Billy’s cheeks, but he doesn’t care because he knows that if he was to look to the side, there would be tears on Steve’s face, too.

Discolored skin and tears, on both their faces.

It’s dark. He’s grateful for it. He wants to become one with the night, he wants to melt away; disappear.

Become a ghost.

Maybe –

He glances over at Steve, next to him. Steve’s got his head tipped back, watching the sky. His skin, where it’s not bruised, is pale – almost luminescent in the darkness.

Maybe Steve is a ghost, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I just a) refuse to accept Billy's death, b) feel that he's gonna be awfully traumatized after everything he's gone through and c) believe that Steve is not coping well with everything HE's gone through, either.
> 
> Thanks to the lovely Lemonlovely, who was nice enough to read through it for me. I still changed a few things after, though, so any remaining mistakes are mine and mine alone.


End file.
